Blackest of Night

[whedonist]

Chapter 8 – Blackest of Night

Pain radiates from my left side, spreading over my stomach and spidering down the rest of my body. My body feels heavy, but at least I’m flat on my back. I resist the urge to open my eyes, for now. Now’s the time to take stock. The trick is to not alert anyone else that I’m sorta, kinda conscious.

The facts: I’m strapped down to the bed or what feels like a bed. My tongue is thick and my throat burns. Will’s alive and somewhere to my left. There’s someone else in the room. They aren’t moving much, but I can hear a third heartbeat. Finally, we come to my most startling revelation for the evening: Buffy’s not only being held captive, again, but is also down to her underwear.

Isn’t there some law of averages that I’m breaking? I mean the last time this happened…it ended…uhm, poorly. Yep, poorly.


It smells like our hotel room. So it’s a good bet that’s where we are. But what the fuck happened? I was getting ready to enjoy Wiccan flesh and then pain. Stupid brain, it feels like it was fried. Fried? Aha! There was someone in the hotel room waiting on us, they stuck Willow with something and then – ah the stun gun. Can I say ouch?

‘Willow?’ I reflect to her, trying to bridge our connection.

Nothing. I push more, harder, ’Willow!’

It takes effort, but I maintain the connection. Nearly sighing when I hear an internal groan. ‘Will, don’t move.’

‘Eh?’ Willow’s groggy voice fills my head. It’s weird. She sounds like she does in the morning.

‘Me. You. Being tied up. Don’t move. Don’t open your eyes,’ I try for firm, but I’m never sure how I come across via telepathy. Can I take a moment to say that my life still borders on an episode of the X-Files most days?

‘Is that why I feel like I have a bad hang over?’

‘They, whoever they are, drugged you. When we get out of this remind me to punch them. Hard.’

‘They? More than one?’ she asks confusion clear in her thoughts – er, uh, question.

‘I think there’s only one. I’m not being gender specific.’

‘Oh.’

Suppressing a small laugh, I ask, ‘Are you okay enough to magick your way out of the binds?’

‘Yeah, my head feels huge, but I should be okay. Plan?’

‘I’m gonna keep them occupied. You get out of it, keep them still and get me out of mine.’

‘Tell me when.’ The connection dulls for a moment then flares back, ‘Buffy, don’t – be careful, please?’

Her concern warms me and I quell the small bit of fear I feel in her, ‘I’ll be fine. Love you.’

‘Love you too.’ I break the connection on my end and crack my eyes open.

The room is lit by the two bedside lamps and a man has his back to us. I squint, looking harder at the top of the head. Hey! I know that head.

Dexter?

What? Huh? And How?

The confusion slices through and I look around the room. On the dresser to my right, there are pictures of the three victims from the Naumbrag demon. Why?

I cough, getting his attention. I go to speak but he silences me with an upturned hand and fills the silence, “Good to see you’re awake. Talking’s not really necessary.”

He slides up to the bed holding the knife Dawn had couriered over. I meet his eyes and press back into the bed. Ice washes down my spine. I should be used to looking into humans like him, but it never seems to stick. They’re cold, empty – almost. The grin I see him wear would chill other – normal people. I’m not normal and fear isn’t something I feel very often.

I’m not scared. More annoyed. He’s going to have to explain what the hell is going on.

I smile up and meet his grin. Sweetly, I reply, “I’m always being told to not talk.” I pause, watching the scowl cross his face then continue, “I really could care less what others tell me to do. It’s a thing.”

A small laugh rumbles through his body as he shrugs and says, “I didn’t expect you to. But I will gag you if you get too loud.”

My eyes flick to Will. She’s shrugging off the ropes while Dexter’s undivided attention is on me. My focus goes back to the C.S.U. man. He doesn’t need to know he’s about to get his ass handed to him.

I’m about to offer another sarcastic comment when he pitches back, up, off his feet and into the wall to his right. He flails and his body crumples. I watch a little wide eyed as he shoots back up and slams into the wall again. This time he stays there. Spread eagle, pinned and wide eyed. I don’t think he’s used to feeling fear. It’s there though, reflecting in his features.

“Willow, uh, untie me?” Her chest is heaving and she’s staring at him. Their eyes are locked on each other. She’s pissed. I know. She hates being tied up just as much as I do. Considering the last time this happened, she’s gonna be pretty pissed off. Well not gonna, more like is. Definite present tense here.

My words finally sink through and she snaps her attention to me. Her features, they soften instantly and she waves another hand over the restraints holding me down, snapping them off.
Uh. I forget. Her like this is sorta scary. I don’t fear things very often. Willow always manages to ping my wig meter for some reason.

“You okay?” she asks softly, seeming to calm just a little.

I nod and swing my feet over the bed. OW! Damn it. That stun gun hurt. I glance down at my side and see the fading bruises and the pinkish, puffy skin. I scowl as I meet Dexter’s gaze. I send him a sour look and reach for the robe Willow’s handing me. She’s already put hers on.

“Are you okay?” I ask pointedly. She smiles brightly and nods.

I secure the sash and grab for Willow’s hand. Her touch calms some of my frayed nerves. Turning my attention to the pinned man on my wall, I demand, “Explain. Now.”

He sputters, coughs, and tries to speak. He manages a wheeze.

“Words help. Try again.” I squeeze Will’s hand a little and his face gets less red.

“Hh-I…how?” he sputters. Words this time. Not an explanation.

I let go of Will’s hand and step up to him, tugging his body down so that we’re eye level. Growling low, I say, “This isn’t your chance to ask ‘how.’ What the hell are you doing here?”

“T-to sttoop yyouu,” he chokes out.

Stop me? I’m full of sense of the not variety. Turning my attention back to Willow, her eyebrows raise at my questioning look. I read that look as ‘what do you want me to do about it.’

“No, I don’t need the ‘exasperated Willow’.”

She relents, folding her arms across her chest. “Minion?” It’s sort of a hopeful question. Honestly, it’s the best of we’ve got.

I spin around and bury my hand an inch from his right ear. Plaster plumes out of the hole as I snarl, “Which demon do you work for?”

His eyes are huge. Frightened and huge. “I don’t…demon? I don’t work for a demon.”

His pulse races, I can see the rapid beat of it reflected in a vein pulsing in his neck. And for some reason, the way he asked about a demon. I don’t think he does. What’s going on? My head starts in on a dull ache.

Willow comes up behind me and pulls my hand from the wall. She looks over my hand; dropping it when she’s satisfied I didn’t damage it. This should hurt. It doesn’t. Punching things stops hurting after the hundred or so pieces of concrete you’ve busted through. It’s one of those things.

Willow turns her gaze to Dexter. I flinch a little and a small drop of sympathy ripples through me. That look could freeze fire.

“If you don’t know any demons, then what are you stopping us from?” Her voice is downright chilly.

He swallows thickly answering, “Stop you from killing anymore people.”

And my cup runneth over with ‘huh?’

---

Kill what? My head’s still sort of fuzzy and I swear that he just said that he was going to stop us from killing anymore people?

“What?” Buffy cuts into my thoughts mirroring the words on the tip of my tongue.

I rub at the puncture on my neck and try to piece together what’s been said. I…he thought we were killing those girls. “What?”

“You two are… aren’t you the ones that have been killing the girls in the hotel rooms?” His voice loses a bit of conviction and simmers to slightly confused with an undercurrent of fear.

“No,” Buffy scoffs at the absurdity of his question. I would scoff too, but right now, I’m too preoccupied with keeping him still and filling in the gaps. I turn slowly and look around the room. The ropes, the restraints and finally, to the pictures of the victims on the dresser.

Oh…

I turn back around and his mouth is hanging open. I put up my hand to stop the words on his lips. “You thought we were killing these,” I point to the pictures, “women. You were going to stop us. Stop us how?” The other pieces click into place and the true intent of his actions…it…it…

He was going to kill us!

I clench my jaw and cap the anger. Anger is not good right now. Anger will lead to badness. I’m done with badness for tonight.

“Why do you think it was us?” I manage to get out. I need more.

“Your convenient appearances at the crime scenes. The information you had here. The knife. The papers. These killings started when you two arrived.” He manages to get all of that out despite the force I’m exerting on his neck.

Well when you put it like that, it all sorta does add up to guiltiness. But we’re not guilty. We just stopped the thing that was. He doesn’t know that. And he obviously doesn’t believe in demons.

But he was still going to kill us!

I circle back around to that thought and the room starts a spinny thing that makes me think I should sit down. Buffy notices and is at my side instantly.

“Will?”

I offer a weak smile and move to sit down on the bed. “I’m good. Dandy even. Just my head’s all blustery.” I sit down on the edge of the bed and rub at my temples. “You were going to kill us.”

He blanches a little as I state his true intent. He was being skirty on the issue. This is no time to skirt.

Buffy turns to him shocked. Didn’t she figure that out?

“You were going to WHAT?” she screeches the last part and it reminds me of Dawn for some reason. Monks or no monks. Those two share a scary amount of similarities.

“Buffy, screaming? Not good.” I try to calm her down. Truthfully, if I screamed, I would probably do the same thing.

She spins to me and motions back at Dexter.

Dexter! I knew I didn’t like him! Darn it!

“Will, he was going to kill us! Kill you, me. I think, given the circumstances, I’m being too damn calm right now.”

She sorta has a point. I’m not letting her know that.

I send her a sour look. “We are still in a hotel. I’m not sure how thick these walls are. Do you want to explain this to anyone else?” Her jaw relaxes as she realizes the truth to my statement.

Her cheeks puff and then deflate as she sits next to me on the bed. She reaches for my hand automatically and I lace our fingers together. She’s tense. I’m tense. It’s a tense situation.

Dexter is tense. The big ole’ meany.

I look sideways at Buffy and try to figure out what to do. There’re more questions than answers at this point, but we need to know. He needs to know.

‘Will?’ her voice softly presses into my thoughts.

‘Yeah, Buff.’

‘Uh, what now?’ she asks as her thumb runs circles over the palm of my hand.

I lean my head on her shoulder and answer, ‘I don’t know.’

She chuckles softly into my robe. ‘Great.’

‘Uh-huh. He was going to kill us. He should at least know that we’ve stopped the killer. Do you want to tell him what the killer was?’

She tenses as my hand runs lazily over her lower back. Yeah I know, more people in the know about demons. Just what we need.

The real kicker is that if he was going to kill us, this probably wasn’t the first time he’s done this. How many people has he actually killed? Does he only kill people that kill other people? And what’s the point of that anyhow?

Kill people that kill people to show that killing people is wrong? May have been on a bumper sticker somewhere, but it’s true. Where’s the sense? There is no sense. It’s non-sensey and the questions keep piling up and I’m getting nowhere.

Focus Willow. Solution. Not the problem.

I feel Buffy shift beside me and stand. I watch as she begins a tight pace in front of me. Great. Now she’s pacing. I shake my head. If it’s a sure sign of ‘agitated Buffy,’ it’s when she paces. She gets uber-tense and snippy. I’m not fond of the snippy.

‘Will, if he was gonna kill us, I’d bet money on this not being his first time, ’ her voice echoes crisp in my mind. Well at least she’s thinking again. The shocks worn off.

‘That’s what I was thinking. Ideas?’

She stops and looks at Dexter. Really looks at him. The seconds lapse and I swear it’s a good two minutes before she sighs and turns back to face me.

Her hands settle on her hips and I flash back to the million and five times I’ve seen her strike that particular pose. From the first day I met her, to now, over a decade later sharing a bed, that pose normally spells trouble. Most of it she gets us out of with only a few scars.

On the very rare occasion, it’s her being just plain old Buffy and wanting to be mischiefy. There was one day during my Integrated Clinical Medicine class, she comes in, hands a sheet of paper to the shocked doctor and turns to me. Pushing her jacket aside to show off her shield, her hands move to her hips, her right hand resting behind her gun, pushing it forward while her left rests casually on the side jutted out. Her smile was playful as the doctor called my name and told me I was dismissed.

The big to do was nothing more than her getting off work early. We had been too ‘two ships in the night’ like over that month and she was up to, as usual, no good. We took the weekend and went to this hotel in Connecticut.

I wish I could say that her like that now would lead to snuggles and breakfast in bed. It won’t. She’s planning something.

‘Will, when I tell you to, drop him,’ her voice fills my mind and I look at her like she’s grown a face full of fangy, bumpy badness.

She rolls her eyes and persists, ‘I want to tie him up. I need to talk to you without him being a worry. Drop him when I tell you and I’ll tie him up.’

Oh. ‘’Kay.’

Yep, planning.

She walks up and grabs him by the back of the neck. He winces as her grip tightens and she nods in my direction. I release him, ending the spell that holds him to the wall and his feet nearly go out from under him. Buffy catches him and drags him sputtering over to the chair that I was tied up in. Planting him down, she quickly lashes a piece of rope around him and has him tied before he can try to escape.

I would feel bad for him if he hadn’t tried to be killy. Unfortunately, he did and I’m not. She checks to make sure that he’s secure. Satisfied, she rights herself, turns to me and motions to step out into the hall.

Yep, plan. I just know it’s not going to involve Twinkies and kisses. Well, crud.

I follow her out the door anyhow.

---

I’m left abandoned and alone. Sweat beads and trickles down my back and face. It’s cold. The two just left. I would say that’s what I meant by alone, but it’s not. I’ve never been without the feeling of having my other self with me. I’ve always been - I suppose the feeling would be warmed by the presence of my Dark Passenger.

It seemed that the moment Willow met my eyes as I was pinned to the wall; he tucked his tail between his legs and scampered off. I don’t know where to nor do I appreciate the abandonment. One moment I was in control, he, we were in control. And then her. I’m tossed around the room by unseen hands and trapped underneath phantoms that nearly squeeze the life out of me.

Were the books about demon and magick actually fact? What have I gotten myself into and how can I get myself out of it?

Fear, frigid, foreign and formidable settles into my gut and I’m unsure of how to handle it. The predator becomes the prey in an odd cosmic twist and Dexter feels as if he’s slipped into some nightmare, drowning in dark dreams. The fact that I’m considering accepting the existence of demons, vampires and magick from the presence of one small doctor causes my head to spin.

Could it have been the truth? More over can it be the truth?

I’ve never been wrong about my selection of victims. Of course the thought that I’ve never run into…into a witch, seems to never have happened to me before either. The thought rolls through me, a witch. Like the Wicked Witch or no, like…something entirely different than what the story books have reported.

And what of the detective? No woman her size and weight should be able to put her fist through a wall, let alone pick me up like I weigh next to nothing and shove me in a chair. But she did. And I think – I know that if I was heavier or even if there were two of me, she’d still be okay with the weight.

My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth as I swallow. Sweating is a usual thing here in Miami, but I’ve never been this cold while sweating at the same time. It’s so bad that I’m shaking. It’s a simple cause, for the first time that I can remember, the entwined path’s of ‘Dear Dexter’ and ‘Dreadful Dexter’ do not lay in the hands of each other. Instead it lay in the hands of two would be victims of my Dark Passenger. Two women who are currently in a heated debate in the hallway.

What are they going to do? Kill me? Turn me in?

More sweating is brought out by more of this foreign concept of fear. It worms and burrows through me. I need to come out of this situation alive and intact. These two can go if I can. It seems only fair at this point. I don’t want to be Dearly Departed Dexter. I like breathing ‘Dynamic Dexter’ just the way he is.

I look up as the door swings open, Buffy enters first. The look on her face is not one that’s pleased. And given the situation the three of us find ourselves in I can certainly see why. She doesn’t move by the open door and I wonder where Willow is.

My curiosity is answered immediately. She enters quietly passing a silent look to her lover. I take in the two very upset faces and I think maybe I can get out of this intact. Maybe a little worse for the wear, but I won’t complain. Maybe my future isn’t in their hands after all.

More silent communication and Willow turns to me. Striding up to me, her thumb presses against my lips as she says, “Fides and Veritas, I invoke thee. I invoke thee to banish Apate and Dolos. Remove all trickery and deceit from these mortal lips. Grant him strength of veracity and sincerity. As I will it, so shall it be.”

As she speaks, a hard tug pulls out from the center of my chest and my head spins. Willow steps back and I shake my head trying to clear the cobwebs her touch caused.

What just happened? Was that a spell? The spinning comes to a rest and I blink, clearing my vision. Willow’s sitting on the edge of the bed and Buffy’s pacing the length of the room as my vision comes back into focus.

“Ready?” Buffy asks. Willow’s nod causes Buffy to turn a cold gaze in my direction. “What’s your name?”

What kind… “Dexter Morgan,” I answer. What just happened?

“Why were you here tonight?” Buffy asks as soon as I answer my name.

“To kill you and Willow.” Okay, this isn’t…

“Why?” Her hands go to her hips as she stops pacing.

I try not to answer, but the words come anyhow, “Because I found evidence that links you two to the killings. The police reports, the knife and other things. You two showed up a day after the first body was found. You’ve found two out of the three. Because I need to.”

“Was this going to be the first time you’ve killed someone?” Willow asks this question as she fidgets on the bed.

“No,” I say against my better judgment. Why can’t I shut up?

“How many people have you killed?” Buffy asks.

“Forty-three.”

They falter at my answer and if I could smirk, I would. For some reason the feeling that I’ve sealed my fate causes the good natured levity about death that I possess to fly out the window.

My future is definitely not in my hands.

“Why?” It seems that ‘why?’ is Buffy’s favorite question.

How do I answer that? “They met Harry’s Code. They were rapists, murders, child molesters. They needed to die. I enjoyed it and I killed them.” I guess I just answered my own question.

“All of them?” Willow croaks.

“Yes.”

“What’s the Harry Code?” Buffy’s curiosity peaks.

I swallow thickly then answer, “A set of guidelines laid out by my foster father Harry Morgan.”

“Guidelines?” both of them ask at the same time.

I’ve caught on to the fact that I can’t not answer their questions and as the words tumble from my mouth, I cringe. “They’re rules that Harry gave me to live by. Make sure that the people I kill are criminals. Make sure I don’t get caught. Don’t kill for personal reasons.”

Buffy’s eyebrow is in her hairline and she stammers unable to ask any more questions. Willow’s nearly picked a hole in the sheet.

“What did you do to me?” I ask the question this time. Might as well give it a shot.

Willow’s head shoots up and she looks me in the eyes. “It’s a truth spell,” she answers blandly.

A what? “A spell? Like hocus pocus? Mumbo-jumbo?”

An annoyed look passes over her as she says, “A spell, yes. And it’s not mumbo jumbo-y or well, I guess it’s hocus-pocus-y, but not in the lame way.”

Huh? “So the things I found today in your room – are you telling me that’s all real?” I can’t believe I just asked that. It’s not like there are many more options. I just knew that undergrad philosophy course was going to come back to bite me in the ass one day. If Misuca was here, he’d say, ‘Fuckin’ Occam’s Razor, Dex. Occam’s fuckin’ Razor.’ And I’d be forced – am forced to agree. The simplest solution for ‘Disbelieving Dexter’ is to take the information they have and the events of tonight as evidence of magick, demons, vampires and other things that go bump in the night.

“Yes,” Buffy finds her voice. The answer leaves no room for argument.

Willow’s voice is soft as she asks, “Why do you kill?”

My head snaps in her direction and I answer. “Because I have to. It’s who I am.” It’s as simple an answer as I can give. It’s a cold, hard truth. I can’t stop killing people anymore than I can stop breathing and continue to live. There have been very few times where I’ve wished it weren’t the case, but overall, I like the person that I am. Evil or not. Damned or not.

Our eyes are locked and I know now that my fate’s sealed. ‘Devilish Dexter’s’ as damned as damned could be.

And for some reason the only other thing that I can think is that Deb won’t be pleased.


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